Mexico city has been a popular tourist destination for many years. Having a complex and rich history, vibrant culture, and diverse attractions, it has been a place that has attracted tourist for many years. During the pandemic, the amount of tourists and "expats" that stayed for long periods of time increased significantly. Increasing the prices of housing and food, making it harder for the local population to afford living in the same areas. This has brought a complex process of touristification, wich has had an unequal impact on the local population.
This map shows the distribution of Airbnb rentals in Mexico City. This data is useful as a reference for popular tourist areas, as Airbnb rentals are often concentrated in areas with high tourist traffic.
Each point represents a single rental listing posted in Airbnb. Mexico City had more than 26,000 listings when the data was obtained on the 19th of march, 2025.
Visualizing more than 26,000 points at this scale is impossible, you can hardly understand where they are clustering. Its easier to understand the distribution of the listings with a heatmap.
With this we can see that there is a concentrations of listing in the city center (the municipality of Cuauhtémoc), the northen part Benito Juárez and a good section of the Miguel Hidalgo.
This is areas have a couple things in common:
- They are some of the oldest neighbourhoods of the city.
- They have a robust conexion to other areas with vaious means of transportation (public and priavte).
- These are some of the most expensive areas in the city to live in.
- They have a high concentration of cultural, economical and historical sites.
- They score some of the higest values in the Social Development Index.
The Social Development Index (SDI) is a measure used to evaluate the social and economic development of a region. It takes into account factors such as income, education, and health care access.
In Mexico City, the SDI is as follows:
This layers show how tourists are exposed to a very specific image of places.
(Move the handle to see how the layers overlap).
This images are often tailored to maximize profits, and these profits are generaly not distributed equaly. Meaning they can controbute to social and economical inequality.
For the case of Mexico City, this has affected local in many ways, the most discussed in the media has been rent prices. Since most people from the global north (where the most tourists come from) concider Mexico as a "cheap" country. Landlords start using a short term buisness models on their, originaly, long term rentals. Hicking up the prices and thus pushing away locals that are not able to pay such high rents with their local living wage.
This fenomenon also contributes to the current housing crisis Mexico is facing.